Mere minutes after learning his long-dead father was the celebrated superhero Copperhead — a secret, despite the costume being left in the top of his adopted dad’s desk drawer — Tekin carries on the family tradition of fistfighting, leaping onto moving trains, and dressing in a sparkly silver mask and flowing red neckerchief. He leaves a novelty snake figurine at the scene of each skirmish, like a parting gift for kicking your ass.
Under the guise of Coppherhead, Tekin seeks to avenge the murder of his two dads by Dr. Satan, because that’s just the kind of thing people with monikers like Dr. Satan are born to do. The Borgnine-ian buffoon Bitik gets assigned to assist Tekin in his mission — a move akin to appointing Jerry Lewis to the G8 summit — so he dons a Sherlock Holmes outfit.
Sporting a mustache that suggests a raccoon tail protruding from within each nostril, Dr. Satan gets others to do his bidding of theft and murder via remote-control devices that he can detonate. (He calls them “explosions,” but if farts were visual, they’d look like this.) Unbeknownst to authorities, the doc has assembled a bowlegged killer robot. It’s so primitive-looking, I wouldn’t be surprised if director Yilmaz Atadeniz ordered it filched from a local first-grade class art room.
Logic figures nowhere in The Deathless Devil, but makes up for it with open-to-close action (intended) and lunacy (some intended). Comic-book colorful and charming in its pure ineptness, the Turkish picture has lots to offer, from Dr. Satan’s booby-trapped lair to an out-of-nowhere love scene. And I want it for all time. —Rod Lott